[dhh]

I think that's a hijacking of the word that's not helpful at all. And I don't think that pg would argue that you can only call yourself a startup if you're going for VC funding and a sale or IPO.

If so, there's an awful lot of tech companies that have been wrongfully labeled as startups under this narrow definition. And you'd only be able to call yourself a startup in retrospect once you saw whether you ended up being a megabucks exit.

So 37signals would have been a startup if we sold to Google tomorrow, but not if we kept on as an independent company just making money?

[thaumaturgy]

No, he might not, but getting funding of some kind is a pretty large part of the kinds of startups that they /are/ talking about, because it makes it easier to develop that massive, rapid growth that gets people's attention. Likewise, a sale or IPO aren't the only ways to derive value out of the startup, but they're the ones that get the most focus, because they're the fastest way to get the desired results (lots of money). I think that this point of view was pretty clear in several of the talks at SS08.

Do I necessarily think that that's the only kind of "startup" that exists? No, not at all. (And I'm probably gonna get busted at some point for putting words in pg's mouth.)

But, in a nutshell, no, they're not talking about the same kind of businesses you are. Others have already made this point for me (http://www.gaborcselle.com/blog/2008/04/startup-school-surfi...).

So, coming back and saying, "No, we're talking about two different approaches to the same thing!" ... well, that's not helpful.

Again, my only point is that they're talking about a very specific sort of model when they use the word "startup". If you think your model is the same thing, I wonder how you'd distinguish between a startup and a "software business", or "web venture", or whatever. (And, I think this point is getting made by other elsewhere, not just in this thread but outside of news.yc.)

[tptacek]

According to Graham, "getting funded" isn't even a part of the plan for most YC startups.

[sabat]

So it's gotten this far now? DHH loves to start fights so much that he had to come over to PG's forum and start them?

PG, who is always civil here, dragged into a stupid semantic fight?

I boggle.

"So 37signals would have been a startup if we sold to Google tomorrow, but not if we kept on as an independent company just making money?"

No, man. You're just playing semantic games, and you know it . The company would have been a startup if its founders had the intentions of being large or becoming part of something large.

Really, you have nothing better to do than to come to this nice place and crap all over it?

[davidw]

I think it's quite interesting to see him here. He disagrees, in a polite way. That kind of thing is healthy. I don't really agree with dhh's definition of a startup, but there's probably not a sharp line between 'startup' and 'a new business' in some cases. In any case, I like the 37signals model, even though I have some nagging doubts about whether it's really quite so simple in an on line world where network effects and other economic factors are often very different from "the real world".

[sabat]

Polite?

You're giving him more credit than he's due. He is not polite. Passive-aggressive arrogance is not the same thing as "polite".